VOLUME III SLICE VI Bent, James to Bibirine (continued 6)

BERNHARD OF SAXE-WEIMAR, Duke (1604-1639), a celebrated general in the Thirty Years’ War, was the eleventh son of John, duke of Saxe-Weimar. He received an unusually good education, and studied at Jena, but soon went to the court of the Saxon elector to engage in knightly exercises. At the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War he took the field on the Protestant side, and served under Mansfeld at Wiesloch (1622), under the margrave of Baden at Wimpfen (1622), and with his brother William at Stadtlohn (1623). Undismayed by these defeats, he took part in the campaigns of the king of Denmark; and when Christian withdrew from the struggle Bernhard went to Holland and was present at the famous siege of Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc) in 1629. When Gustavus Adolphus landed in Germany Bernhard quickly joined him, and for a short time he was colonel of the Swedish life guards. After the battle of Breitenfeld he accompanied Gustavus in his march to the Rhine and, between this event and the battle of the Alte Veste, Bernhard commanded numerous expeditions in almost every district from the Moselle to Tirol. At the Alte Veste he displayed the greatest courage, and at Lützen, when Gustavus was killed, Bernhard immediately assumed the command, killed a colonel who refused to lead his men to the charge, and finally by his furious energy won the victory at sundown. At first as a subordinate to his brother William, who as a Swedish lieutenant-general succeeded to the command, but later as an independent commander, Bernhard continued to push his forays over southern Germany; and with the Swedish General Horn he made in 1633 a successful invasion into Bavaria, which was defended by the imperialist general Arldinger. In this year he acquired the duchy of Würzburg, installing one of his brothers as Stadthalter, and returning to the wars. A stern Protestant, he exacted heavy contributions from the Catholic cities which he took, and his repeated victories caused him to be regarded by German Protestants as the saviour of their religion. But in 1634 Bernhard suffered the great defeat of Nördlingen, in which the flower of the Swedish army perished. In 1635 he entered the service of France, which had now intervened in the war. He was now at the same time general-in-chief of the forces maintained by the Heilbronn union of Protestant princes, and a general officer in the pay of France. This double position was very difficult; in the following campaigns, ably and resolutely conducted as they were, Bernhard sometimes pursued a purely French policy, whilst at other times he used the French mercenaries to forward the cause of the princes. From a military point of view his most notable achievements were on the common ground of the upper Rhine, in the Breisgau. In his great campaign of 1638 he won the battles of Rheinfelden, Wittenweiher and Thann, and captured successively Rheinfelden, Fieiburg and Breisach, the last reputed one of the strongest fortresses in Europe. Bernhard had in the first instance received definite assurances from France that he should be given Alsace and Hagenau, Würzburg having been lost in the débâcle of 1634; he now hoped to make Breisach the capital of his new duchy. But his health was now broken. He died on the 8/18th of July 1639 at the beginning of the campaign, and the governor of Breisach was bribed to transfer the fortress to France. The duke was buried at Breisach, his remains being subsequently removed to Weimar.

See J.A.C. Hellfeld, Geschichte Bernhards des Grossen, Herzogs v. Saxe-Weimar (Jena, 1747); B. Rose, Herzog Bernhard d. Grosse von Saxe-Weimar (Weimar, 1828-1829); Droysen, Bernhard v. Weimar (Leipzig, 1885).

BERNHARDT, SARAH (Rosine Bernard) (1845- ), French actress, was born in Paris on the 22nd of October 1845, of mixed French and Dutch parentage, and of Jewish descent. She was, however, baptized at the age of twelve and brought up in a convent. At thirteen she entered the Conservatoire, where she gained the second prize for tragedy in 1861 and for comedy in 1862. Her début was made at the Comédie Française on the 11th of August 1862, in a minor part in Racine’s Iphigénie en Aulide, without any marked success, nor did she do much better in burlesque at the Porte St-Martin and Gymnase. In 1867 she became a member of the company at the Odéon, where she made her first definite successes as Cordelia in a French translation of King Lear, as the queen in Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas, and, above all, as Zanetto in François Coppée’s Le Passant (1869). When peace was restored after the Franco-German War she left the Odéon for the Comédie Française, thereby incurring a considerable monetary forfeit. From that time she steadily increased her reputation, two of the most definite steps in her progress being her performances of Phèdre in Racine’s play (1874) and of Dona Sol in Victor Hugo’s Hernani (1877). In 1879 she had a famous season at the Gaiety in London. By this time her position as the greatest actress of her day was securely established. Her amazing power of emotional acting, the extraordinary realism and pathos of her death-scenes, the magnetism of her personality, and the beauty of her “voix d’or,” made the public tolerant of her occasional caprices. She had developed some skill as a sculptor, and exhibited at the Salon at various times between 1876 (honourable mention) and 1881. She also exhibited a painting there in 1880. In 1878 she published a prose sketch, Dans les nuages; les impressions d’une chaise. Her comedy L’Aveu was produced in 1888 at the Odéon without much success. Her relations with the other sociétaires of the Comédie Française having become somewhat strained, a crisis arrived in 1880, when, enraged by an unfavourable criticism of her acting, she threw up her position on the day following the first performance of Emile Augier’s L’Aventurière. This obliged her to pay a forfeit of £4000 for breach of contract. Immediately after the rupture she gave a series of performances in London, relying chiefly upon Scribe and Legouvé’s Adrienne Lecouvreur and Meilhac and Halévy’s Frou Frou. These were followed by tours in Denmark, America and Russia, during 1880 and 1881, with La Dame aux camélias as the principal attraction. In 1882 she married Jacques Damala, a Greek, in London, but separated from him at the end of the following year. After a fresh triumph in Paris with Sardou’s Fédora at the Vaudeville she became proprietress of the Porte St-Martin. Jean Richepin’s Nana Sahib (1883), Sardou’s Théodora (1884) and La Tosca (1887), Jules Barbier’s Jeanne d’Arc (1890) and Sardou and Moreau’s Cléopâtre (1890) were among her most conspicuous successes here, where she remained till she became proprietress of the Renaissance theatre in 1893. During those ten years she made several extended tours, including visits to America in 1886-1887 and 1888-1889. Between 1891 and 1893 she again visited America (North and South), Australia, and the chief European capitals. In November 1893 she opened the Renaissance with Les Rois by Jules Lemaitre, which was followed by Sylvestre and Morand’s Izeyl (1894), Sardou’s Gismonda (1894) and Edmond Rostand’s La Princesse lointaine (1895). In 1895 she also appeared with conspicuous success as Magda in a French translation of Sudermann’s Heimat. For the next few years she visited London almost annually, and America in 1896. In that year she made a success with an adaptation of Alfred de Musset’s Lorenzaccio. In Easter week of 1897 she played in a religious drama, La Samaritaine, by Rostand. In December 1896 an elaborate fête was organized in Paris in her honour; and the value of this public recognition of her position at the head of her profession was enhanced by cordial greetings from all parts of the world. By this time she had played one hundred and twelve parts, thirty-eight of which she had created. Early in 1899 she removed from the Renaissance to the Théâtre des Nations, a larger house, which she opened with a revival of La Tosca. In the same year she made the bold experiment of a French production of Hamlet, in which she played the title part. She repeated the impersonation in London not long afterwards, where she also appeared (1901) as the fate-ridden son of Napoleon I., in Rostand’s L’Aiglon, which had been produced in Paris the year before. Of the successful productions of her later years perhaps none was more remarkable than her impersonation of La Tisbé in Victor Hugo’s romantic drama Angelo (1905).

See Jules Huret, Sarah Bernhardt (1889); and her own volume of autobiography (1907).

BERNHARDY, GOTTFRIED (1800-1875), German philologist and literary historian, was born on the 20th of March 1800, at Landsberg on the Wartia, in Brandenburg. He was the son of Jewish parents in reduced circumstances. Two well-to-do uncles provided the means for his education, and in 1811 he entered the Joachimsthal gymnasium at Berlin. In 1817 he went to Berlin University to study philology, where he had the advantage of hearing F.A. Wolf (then advanced in years), August Böckh and P. Buttmann. In 1822 he took the degree of doctor of philosophy at Berlin, and in 1825 became extraordinary professor. In 1829 he succeeded C. Reisig as ordinary professor and director of the philological seminary at Halle, and in 1844 was appointed chief librarian of the university. He died suddenly on the 14th of May 1875. The most important of Bernhardy’s works were his histories (or sketches) of Greek and Roman literature; Grundriss der römischen Litteratur (5th ed., 1872); Grundriss der griechischcn Litteratur (pt. i., Introduction and General View, 1836; pt. ii, Greek Poetry, 1845; pt. iii., Greek Prose Literature, was never published). A fifth edition of pts. i. and ii., by R. Volkmann, began in 1892. Other works by Bernhardy are: Eratosthenica (1822); Wissenschaftliche Syntax der griechischen Sprache (1829, suppts. 1854, 1862); Grundlinien zur Encyclopädie der Philologie (1832); the monumental edition of the Lexicon of Suidas (1834-1853); and an edition of F.A. Wolf’s Kleine Schriften (1869).

See Volkmann, G. Bernhardy (1887).

BERNI, FRANCESCO (1497-1536), Italian poet, was born about 1497 at Lamporecchio, in Bibbiena, a district lying along the Upper Arno. His family was of good descent, but excessively poor. At an early age he was sent to Florence, where he remained till his 19th year. He then set out for Rome, trusting to obtain some assistance from his uncle, the Cardinal Bibbiena. The cardinal, however, did nothing for him, and he was obliged to accept a situation as clerk or secretary to Ghiberti, datary to Clement VII. The duties of his office, for which Berni was in every way unfit, were exceedingly irksome to the poet, who, however, made himself celebrated at Rome as the most witty and inventive of a certain club of literary men, who devoted themselves to light and sparkling effusions. So strong was the admiration for Berni’s verses, that mocking or burlesque poems have since been called poesie bernesca. About the year 1530 he was relieved from his servitude by obtaining a canonry in the cathedral of Florence. In that city he died in 1536, according to tradition poisoned by Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, for having refused to poison the duke’s cousin, Ippolito de’ Medici; but considerable obscurity rests over this story. Berni stands at the head of Italian comic or burlesque poets. For lightness, sparkling wit, variety of form and fluent diction, his verses are unsurpassed. Perhaps, however, he owes his greatest fame to the recasting (Rifacimento) of Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato. The enormous success of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso had directed fresh attention to the older poem, from which it took its characters, and of which it is the continuation. But Boiardo’s work, though good in plan, could never have achieved wide popularity on account of the extreme ruggedness of its style. Berni undertook the revision of the whole poem, avowedly altering no sentiment, removing or adding no incident, but simply giving to each line and stanza due gracefulness and polish. His task he completed with marvellous success; scarcely a line remains as it was, and the general opinion has pronounced decisively in favour of the revision over the original. To each canto he prefixed a few stanzas of reflective verse in the manner of Ariosto, and in one of these introductions he gives us the only certain information we have concerning his own life. Berni appears to have been favourably disposed towards the Reformation principles at that time introduced into Italy, and this may explain the bitterness of some remarks of his upon the church. The first edition of the Rifacimento was printed posthumously in 1541, and it has been supposed that a few passages either did not receive the author’s final revision, or have been retouched by another hand.

A partial translation of Berni’s Orlando was published by W.S. Rose (1823).

BERNICIA, the northern of the two English kingdoms which were eventually united in the kingdom of Northumbria. Its territory is said to have stretched from the Tyne northwards, ultimately reaching the Forth, while its western frontier was gradually extended at the expense of the Welsh. The chief royal residence was Bamburgh, and near it was the island of Lindisfarne, afterwards the see of a bishop. The first king of whom we have any record is Ida, who is said to have obtained the throne about 547. Æthelfrith, king of Bernicia, united Deira to his own kingdom, probably about 605, and the union continued under his successor Edwin, son of Ella or Ælle, king of Deira. Bernicia was again separate from Deira under Eanfrith, son of Æthelfrith (633-634), after which date the kings of Bernicia were supreme in Northumbria, though for a short time under Oswio Deira had a king of its own.

See Bede, Hist. Eccles. ii. 14, iii. 1, 14; Nennius, § 63; Simeon of Durham, i. 339.

(F. G. M. B.)

BERNICIAN SERIES, in geology, a term proposed by S.P. Woodward in 1856 (Manual of Mollusca, p. 409) for the lower portion of the Carboniferous System, below the Millstone Grit. The name was suggested by that of the ancient province of Bernicia on the Anglo-Scottish borderland. It is practically equivalent to the “Dinantien” of A. de Lapparent and Munier-Chalmas (1893). In 1875 G. Tate’s “Calcareous and Carbonaceous” groups of the Carboniferous Limestone series of Northumberland were united by Professor Lebour into a single series, to which he applied the name “Bernician”; but later he speaks of the whole of the Carboniferous rocks of Northumberland and its borders as of the “Bernician type,” which is the most satisfactory way in which the term may now be used (Report of the Brit. Sub-committee on Classification and Nomenclature, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1888). “Demetian” was the corresponding designation proposed by Woodward for the Upper Carboniferous rocks.

BERNINI, GIOVANNI LORENZO (1598-1680), Italian artist, was born at Naples. He was more celebrated as an architect and a sculptor than as a painter. At a very early age his great skill in modelling introduced him to court favour at Rome, and he was specially patronized by Maffeo Barberini, afterwards Pope Urban VIII., whose palace he designed. None of his sculptured groups at all come up to the promised excellence of his first effort, the Apollo and Daphne, nor are any of his paintings of particular merit. His busts were in so much request that Charles I. of England, being unable to have a personal interview with Bernini, sent him three portraits by Vandyck, from which the artist was enabled to complete his model. His architectural designs, including the great colonnade of St Peter’s, brought him perhaps his greatest celebrity. Louis XIV., when he contemplated the restoration of the Louvre, sent for Bernini, but did not adopt his designs. The artist’s progress through France was a triumphal procession, and he was most liberally rewarded by the great monarch. He left a fortune of over £100,000.

BERNIS, FRANÇOIS JOACHIM DE PIERRE DE (1715-1794), French cardinal and statesman, was born at St Marcel-d’Ardèche on the 22nd of May 1715. He was of a noble but impoverished family, and, being a younger son, was intended for the church. He was educated at the Louis-le-Grand college and the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, but did not take orders till 1755. He became known as one of the most expert epigrammatists in the gay society of Louis XV.’s court, and by his verses won the friendship of Madame de Pompadour, the royal mistress, who obtained for him an apartment, furnished at her expense, in the Tuileries, and a yearly pension of 1500 livres (about £60). In 1751 he was appointed to the French embassy at Venice, where he acted, to the satisfaction of both parties, as mediator between the republic and Pope Benedict XIV. During his stay in Venice he received subdeacon’s orders, and on his return to France in 1755 was made a papal councillor of state. He took an important part in the delicate negotiations between France and Austria which preceded the Seven Years’ War. He regarded the alliance purely as a temporary expedient, and did not propose to employ the whole forces of France in a general war. But he was overruled by his colleagues. He became secretary for foreign affairs on the 27th of June 1757, but owing to his attempts to counteract the spendthrift policy of the marquise de Pompadour and her creatures, he fell into disgrace and was in December 1758 banished to Soissons by Louis XV., where he remained in retirement for six years. In the previous November he had been created cardinal by Clement XIII. On the death of the royal mistress in 1764, Bernis was recalled and once more offered the seals of office, but declined them, and was appointed archbishop of Albi. His occupancy of the see was not of long duration. In 1769 he went to Rome to assist at the conclave which resulted in the election of Clement XIV., and the talent which he displayed on that occasion procured him the appointment of ambassador in Rome, where he spent the remainder of his life. He was partly instrumental in bringing about the suppression of the Jesuits, and acted with greater moderation than is generally allowed. He lost his influence under Pius VI., who was friendly to the Jesuits, and the French Revolution, to which he was hostile, reduced him almost to penury; the court of Spain, however, mindful of the support he had given to their ambassador in obtaining the condemnation of the Jesuits, came to his relief with a handsome pension. He died at Rome on the 3rd of November 1794, and was buried in the church of S. Luigi de’ Francesi. In 1803 his remains were transferred to the cathedral at Nîmes. His poems, the longest of which is La Religion vengée (Parma, 1794), have no merit; they were collected and published after his death (Paris, 1797, &c.); his Mémoires et lettres 1715-58 (2 vols., Paris, 1878) are still interesting to the historian.

See Frédéric Masson’s prefaces to the Mémoires et lettres, and Le Cardinal de Bernis depuis son ministère; (Paris, 1884); E. et J. de Goncourt, Mme de Pompadour (Paris, 1888), and Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, t. viii.

BERNKASTEL, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the Mosel, in a deep and romantic valley, connected by a branch to Wengerohr with the main Trier-Coblenz railway. Pop. 2300. It has some unimportant manufactures; the chief industry is in wine, of which Berncastler Doctor enjoys great repute. Above the town lie the ruins of the castle Landshut. Bernkastel originally belonged to the chapter of Trier, and received its name from one of the provosts of the cathedral, Adalbero of Luxemburg (hence Adalberonis castellum).

BERNOULLI, or Bernouilli, the name of an illustrious family in the annals of science, who came originally from Antwerp. Driven from their country during the oppressive government of Spain for their attachment to the Reformed religion, the Bernoullis sought first an asylum at Frankfort (1583), and afterwards at Basel, where they ultimately obtained the highest distinctions. In the course of a century eight of its members successfully cultivated various branches of mathematics, and contributed powerfully to the advance of science. The most celebrated were Jacques (James), Jean (John) and Daniel, the first, second and fourth as dealt with below; but, for the sake of perspicuity they may be considered as nearly as possible in the order of family succession. A complete summary of the great developments of mathematical learning, which the members of this family effected, lies outside the scope of this notice. More detailed accounts are to be found in the various mathematical articles.

I. Jacques Bernoulli (1654-1705), mathematician, was born at Basel on the 27th of December 1654. He was educated at the public school of Basel, and also received private instruction from the learned Hoffmann, then professor of Greek. At the conclusion of his philosophical studies at the university, some geometrical figures, which fell in his way, excited in him a passion for mathematical pursuits, and in spite of the opposition of his father, who wished him to be a clergyman, he applied himself in secret to his favourite science. In 1676 he visited Geneva on his way to France, and subsequently travelled to England and Holland. While at Geneva he taught a blind girl several branches of science, and also how to write; and this led him to publish A Method of Teaching Mathematics to the Blind. At Bordeaux his Universal Tables on Dialling were constructed; and in London he was admitted to the meetings of Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and other learned and scientific men. On his final return to Basel in 1682, he devoted himself to physical and mathematical investigations, and opened a public seminary for experimental physics. In the same year he published his essay on comets, Conamen Novi Systematis Cometarum, which was occasioned by the appearance of the comet of 1680. This essay, and his next publication, entitled De Gravitate Aetheris, were deeply tinged with the philosophy of René Descartes, but they contain truths not unworthy of the philosophy of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia.

Jacques Bernoulli cannot be strictly called an independent discoverer; but, from his extensive and successful application of the calculus and other mathematical methods, he is deserving of a place by the side of Newton and Leibnitz. As an additional claim to remembrance, he was the first to solve Leibnitz’s problem of the isochronous curve (Acta Eruditorum, 1690). He proposed the problem of the catenary (q.v.) or curve formed by a chain suspended by its two extremities, accepted Leibnitz’s construction of the curve and solved more complicated problems relating to it. He determined the “elastic curve,” which is formed by an elastic plate or rod fixed at one end and bent by a weight applied to the other, and which he showed to be the same as the curvature of an impervious sail filled with a liquid (lintearia). In his investigations respecting cycloidal lines and various spiral curves, his attention was directed to the loxodromic and logarithmic spirals, in the last of which he took particular interest from its remarkable property of reproducing itself under a variety of conditions.

In 1696 he proposed the famous problem of isoperimetrical figures, and offered a reward for its solution. This problem engaged the attention of British as well as continental mathematicians; and its proposal gave rise to a painful quarrel with his brother Jean. Jean offered a solution of the problem; his brother pronounced it to be wrong. Jean then amended his solution, and again offered it, and claimed the reward. Jacques still declared it to be no solution, and soon after published his own. In 1701 he published also the demonstration of his solution, which was accepted by the marquis de l’Hôpital and Leibnitz. Jean, however, held his peace for several years, and then dishonestly published, after the death of Jacques, another incorrect solution; and not until 1718 did he admit that he had been in error. Even then he set forth as his own his brother’s solution purposely disguised.

In 1687 the mathematical chair of the university of Basel was conferred upon Jacques. He was once made rector of his university, and had other distinctions bestowed on him. He and his brother Jean were the first two foreign associates of the Academy of Sciences of Paris; and, at the request of Leibnitz, they were both received as members of the academy of Berlin. In 1684 he had been offered a professorship at Heidelberg; but his marriage with a lady of his native city led him to decline the invitation. Intense application brought on infirmities and a slow fever, of which he died on the 16th of August 1705. Like another Archimedes, he requested that the logarithmic spiral should be engraven on his tombstone, with these words, Eadem mutata resurgo.

Jacques Bernoulli wrote elegant verses in Latin, German and French; but although these were held in high estimation in his own time, it is on his mathematical works that his fame now rests. These are:—Jacobi Bernoulli Basiliensis Opera (Genevae, 1744), 2 tom. 4to; Ars Conjectandi, opus posthumum: accedunt tractatus de Seriebus Infinitis, et epistola (Gallice scripta) de Ludo Pilae Reticularis (Basiliae, 1713), 1 tom. 4to.

II. Jean Bernoulli (1667-1748), brother of the preceding, was born at Basel on the 27th of July 1667. After finishing his literary studies he was sent to Neuchâtel to learn commerce and acquire the French language. But at the end of a year he renounced the pursuits of commerce, returned to the university of Basel, and was admitted to the degree of bachelor in philosophy, and a year later, at the age of 18, to that of master of arts. In his studies he was aided by his elder brother Jacques. Chemistry, as well as mathematics, seems to have been the object of his early attention; and in the year 1690 he published a dissertation on effervescence and fermentation. The same year he went to Geneva, where he gave instruction in the differential calculus to Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, and afterwards proceeded to Paris, where he enjoyed the society of N. Malebranche, J.D. Cassini, Philip de Lahire and Pierre Varignon. With the marquis de l’Hôpital he spent four months studying higher geometry and the resources of the new calculus. His independent discoveries in mathematics are numerous and important. Among these were the exponential calculus, and the curve called by him the linea brachistochrona, or line of swiftest descent, which he was the first to determine, pointing out at the same time the relation which this curve bears to the path described by a ray of light passing through strata of variable density. On his return to his native city he studied medicine, and in 1694 took the degree of M.D. Although he had declined a professorship in Germany, he now accepted an invitation to the chair of mathematics at Groningen (Commercium Philosophicum, epist. xi. and xii.). There, in addition to the learned lectures by which he endeavoured to revive mathematical science in the university, he gave a public course of experimental physics. During a residence of ten years in Groningen, his controversies were almost as numerous as his discoveries. His dissertation on the “barometric light,” first observed by Jean Picard, and discussed by Jean Bernoulli under the name of mercurial phosphorus, or mercury shining in vacuo (Diss. physica de mercurio lucente in vacuo), procured him the notice of royalty, and engaged him in controversy. Through the influence of Leibnitz he received from the king of Prussia a gold medal for his supposed discoveries; but Nicolaus Hartsoeker and some of the French academicians disputed the fact. The family quarrel about the problem of isoperimetrical figures above mentioned began about this time. In his dispute with his brother, in his controversies with the English and Scottish mathematicians, and in his harsh and jealous bearing to his son Daniel, he showed a mean, unfair and violent temper. He had declined, during his residence at Groningen, an invitation to Utrecht, but accepted in 1705 the mathematical chair in the university of his native city, vacant by the death of his brother Jacques; and here he remained till his death. His inaugural discourse was on the “new analysis,” which he so successfully applied in investigating various problems both in pure and applied mathematics.

He was several times a successful competitor for the prizes given by the Academy of Sciences of Paris; the subjects of his essays being:—the laws of motion (Discours sur les lois de la communication du mouvement, 1727), the elliptical orbits of the planets, and the inclinations of the planetary orbits (Essai d’une nouvelle physique céleste, 1735). In the last case his son Daniel divided the prize with him. Some years after his return to Basel he published an essay, entitled Nouvelle Théorie de la manœuvre des vaisseaux. It is, however, his works in pure mathematics that are the permanent monuments of his fame. Jean le Rond d’Alembert acknowledges with gratitude, that “whatever he knew of mathematics he owed to the works of Jean Bernoulli.” He was a member of almost every learned society in Europe, and one of the first mathematicians of a mathematical age. He was as keen in his resentments as he was ardent in his friendships; fondly attached to his family, he yet disliked a deserving son; he gave full praise to Leibnitz and Leonhard Euler, yet was blind to the excellence of Sir Isaac Newton. Such was the vigour of his constitution that he continued to pursue his usual mathematical studies till the age of eighty. He was then attacked by a complaint at first apparently trifling; but his strength daily and rapidly declined till the 1st of January 1748, when he died peacefully in his sleep.

His writings were collected under his own eye by Gabriel Cramer, professor of mathematics at Geneva, and published under the title of Johannis Bernoulli Operi Omnia (Lausan. et Genev.), 4 tom. 4to; his interesting correspondence with Leibnitz appeared under the title of Gul. Leibnitii et Johannis Bernoulli Commercium Philosophicum et Mathematicum (Lausan. et Genev. 1745), 2 tom. 4to.

III. Nicolas Bernoulli (1695-1726), the eldest of the three sons of Jean Bernoulli, was born on the 27th of January 1695. At the age of eight he could speak German, Dutch, French and Latin. When his father returned to Basel he went to the university of that city, where, at the age of sixteen, he took the degree of doctor in philosophy, and four years later the highest degree in law. Meanwhile the study of mathematics was not neglected, as appears not only from his giving instruction in geometry to his younger brother Daniel, but from his writings on the differential, integral, and exponential calculus, and from his father considering him, at the age of twenty-one, worthy of receiving the torch of science from his own hands. (“Lampada nunc tradam filio meo natu maximo, juveni xxi. annorum, ingenio mathematico aliisque dotibus satis instructo,” Com. Phil. ep. 223.) With his father’s permission he visited Italy and France, and during his travels formed friendship with Pierre Varignon and Count Riccati. The invitation of a Venetian nobleman induced him again to visit Italy, where he resided two years, till his return to be a candidate for the chair of jurisprudence at Basel. He was unsuccessful, but was soon afterwards appointed to a similar office in the university of Bern. Here he resided three years, his happiness only marred by regret on account of his separation from his brother Daniel. Both were appointed at the same time professors of mathematics in the academy of St Petersburg; but this office Nicolas enjoyed for little more then eight months. He died on the 26th of July 1726 of a lingering fever. Sensible of the loss which the nation had sustained by his death, the empress Catherine ordered him a funeral at the public expense.

Some of his papers are published in his father’s works, and others in the Acta Eruditorum and the Comment. Acad. Petropol.

IV. Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782), the second son of Jean Bernoulli, was born on the 29th of January 1700, at Groningen. He studied medicine and became a physician, but his attention was early directed also to geometrical studies. The severity of his father’s manner was ill-calculated to encourage the first efforts of one so sensitive; but fortunately, at the age of eleven, he became the pupil of his brother Nicolas. He afterwards studied in Italy under Francesco Domenico Michelotti and Giambattista Morgagni. After his return, though only twenty-four years of age, he was invited to become president of an academy then projected at Genoa; but, declining this honour, he was, in the following year, appointed professor of mathematics at St Petersburg. In consequence of the state of his health, however, he returned to Basel in 1733, where he was appointed professor of anatomy and botany, and afterwards of experimental and speculative philosophy. In the labours of this office he spent the remaining years of his life. He had previously published some medical and botanical dissertations, besides his Exercitationes quaedam Mathematicae, containing a solution of the differential equation proposed by Riccati and now known by his name. In 1738 appeared his Hydrodynamica, in which the equilibrium, the pressure, the reaction and varied velocities of fluids are considered both theoretically and practically. One of these problems, illustrated by experiment, deals with an ingenious mode of propelling vessels by the reaction of water ejected from the stern. Some of his experiments on this subject were performed before Pierre Louis M. de Maupertuis and Alexis Claude Clairaut, whom the fame of the Bernoullis had attracted to Basel. With a success equalled only by Leonhard Euler, Daniel Bernoulli gained or shared no less than ten prizes of the Academy of Sciences of Paris. The first, for a memoir on the construction of a clepsydra for measuring time exactly at sea, he gained at the age of twenty-four; the second, for one on the physical cause of the inclination of the planetary orbits, he divided with his father; and the third, for a communication on the tides, he shared with Euler, Colin Maclaurin and another competitor. The problem of vibrating cords, which had been some time before resolved by Brook Taylor (1685-1731) and d’Alembert, became the subject of a long discussion conducted in a generous spirit between Bernoulli and his friend Euler. In one of his early investigations he gave an ingenious though indirect demonstration of the problem of the parallelogram of forces. His labours in the decline of life were chiefly directed to the doctrine of probabilities in reference to practical purposes, and in particular to economical subjects, as, for example, to inoculation, and to the duration of married life in the two sexes, as well as to the relative proportion of male and female births. He retained his usual vigour of understanding till near the age of eighty, when his nephew Jacques relieved him of his public duties. He was afflicted with asthma, and his retirement was relieved only by the society of a few chosen friends. He died on the 17th of March 1782 at Basel. Excluded by his professional character from the councils of the republic, he nevertheless received all the deference and honour due to a first magistrate. He was wont to mention the following as the two incidents in his life which had afforded him the greatest pleasure,—that a stranger, whom he had met as a travelling companion in his youth, made to his declaration “I am Daniel Bernoulli” the incredulous and mocking reply, “And I am Isaac Newton”; and that, while entertaining König and other guests, he solved without rising from table a problem which that mathematician had submitted as difficult and lengthy. Like his father, he was a member of almost every learned society of Europe, and he succeeded him as foreign associate of the Academy of Paris.

Several of his investigations are contained in the earlier volumes of the Comment. Acad. Petropol.; and his separately published works are:—Dissertatio Inaugur. Phys. Med. de Respiratione (Basil. 1721), 4to; Positiones Anatomico-Botanicae (Basil. 1721), 4to; Exercitationes quaedam Mathematicae (Venetiis, 1724), 4to; Hydrodynamica (Argentorati, 1738), 4to.

V. Jean Bernoulli (1710-1790), the youngest of the three sons of Jean Bernoulli, was born at Basel on the 18th of May 1710. He studied law and mathematics, and, after travelling in France, was for five years professor of eloquence in the university of his native city. On the death of his father he succeeded him as professor of mathematics. He was thrice a successful competitor for the prizes of the Academy of Sciences of Paris. His prize subjects were, the capstan, the propagation of light, and the magnet. He enjoyed the friendship of P.L.M. de Maupertuis, who died under his roof while on his way to Berlin. He himself died in 1790. His two sons, Jean and Jacques, are the last noted mathematicians of the family.

VI. Nicolas Bernoulli (1687-1759), cousin of the three preceding, and son of Nicolas Bernoulli, one of the senators of Basel, was born in that city on the 10th of October 1687. He visited England, where he was kindly received by Sir Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley (Com. Phil. ep. 199), held for a time the mathematical chair at Padua, and was successively professor of logic and of law at Basel, where he died on the 29th of November 1759. He was editor of the Ars Conjectandi of his uncle Jacques. His own works are contained in the Acta Eruditorum, the Giornale de’ letterati d’ Italia, and the Commercium Philosophicum.

VII. Jean Bernoulli (1744-1807), grandson of the first Jean Bernoulli, and son of the second of that name, was born at Basel on the 4th of November 1744. He studied at Basel and at Neuchâtel, and when thirteen years of age took the degree of doctor in philosophy. At nineteen he was appointed astronomer royal of Berlin. Some years after, he visited Germany, France and England, and subsequently Italy, Russia and Poland. On his return to Berlin he was appointed director of the mathematical department of the academy. Here he died on the 13th of July 1807. His writings consist of travels and astronomical, geographical and mathematical works. In 1774 he published a French translation of Leonhard Euler’s Elements of Algebra. He contributed several papers to the Academy of Berlin.

VIII. Jacques Bernoulli (1759-1789), younger brother of the preceding, and the second of this name, was born at Basel on the 17th of October 1759. Having finished his literary studies, he was, according to custom, sent to Neuchâtel to learn French. On his return he graduated in law. This study, however, did not check his hereditary taste for geometry. The early lessons which he had received from his father were continued by his uncle Daniel, and such was his progress that at the age of twenty-one he was called to undertake the duties of the chair of experimental physics, which his uncle’s advanced years rendered him unable to discharge. He afterwards accepted the situation of secretary to count de Brenner, which afforded him an opportunity of seeing Germany and Italy. In Italy he formed a friendship with Lorgna, professor of mathematics at Verona, and one of the founders of the Società Italiana for the encouragement of the sciences. He was also made corresponding member of the royal society of Turin; and, while residing at Venice, he was, through the friendly representation of Nicolaus von Fuss, admitted into the academy of St Petersburg. In 1788 he was named one of its mathematical professors.

He was tragically drowned while bathing in the Neva in July 1789, a few months after his marriage with a daughter of Albert Euler, son of Leonhard Euler.

Several of his papers are contained in the first six volumes of Nova Acta Acad. Scien. Imper. Petropol., in the Acta Helvetica, in the Memoirs of the Academies of Berlin and Turin, and in his brother John’s publications. He also published separately some juridical and physical theses, and a German translation of Mémoires du philosophe de Merian. See generally M. Cantor, Geschichte der Mathematik; J.C. Poggendorff, Biographisch-literarisches Handwörterbuch (1863-1904).

BERNSTEIN, AARON (1812-1884), Jewish scientist, author and reformer. In the middle of the 19th century Bernstein took an active share in the movement for synagogue reform in Germany. He was the author of two delightful Ghetto stories, Vögele der Maggid and Mendel Gibbor, being one of the originators of this genre of modern fiction. He was also a publicist, and his History of Revolution and Reaction in Germany (3 vols., 1883-1884) was a collection of important political essays.

BERNSTORFF, ANDREAS PETER, Count von (1735-1797), Danish statesman, was born at Hanover on the 28th of August 1735. His career was determined by his uncle, Johann Hartwig Ernst Bernstorff, who early discerned the talents of his nephew and induced him to study in the German and Swiss universities and travel for some years in Italy, France, England and Holland, to prepare himself for a statesman’s career. During these Wanderjahre he made the acquaintance of the poets Gellert and Jacobi, the learned Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, the duc de Choiseul, and Gottfried Achenwall, the statistician. At his uncle’s desire he rejected the Hanoverian for the Danish service, and in 1759 took his seat in the German chancery at Copenhagen. In 1767, at the same time as his uncle, he was created a count, and in 1769 was made a privy-councillor. He is described at this period as intellectual, upright and absolutely trustworthy, but obstinate and self-opinionated to the highest degree, arguing with antiquaries about coins, with equerries about horses, and with foreigners about their own countries, always certain that he was right and they wrong, whatever the discussion might be. He shared the disgrace of his uncle when Struensee came into power, but re-entered the Danish service after Struensee’s fall at the end of 1772, working at first in the financial and economical departments, and taking an especial interest in agriculture. The improvements he introduced in the tenures of his peasantry anticipated in some respects the agricultural reforms of the next generation.

In April 1773 Bernstorff was transferred to the position for which he was especially fitted, the ministry of foreign affairs, with which he combined the presidency of the German chancery (for Schleswig-Holstein). His predecessor, Adolf Siegfried Osten, had been dismissed because he was not persona grata at St Petersburg, and Bernstorff’s first official act was to conclude the negotiations which had long been pending with the grand-duke Paul as duke of Holstein-Gottorp. The result was the exchange-treaty of the 1st of June (May 21 O.S.) 1773, confirming the previous treaty of 1767 (see Bernstorff, J.H.E.). This was followed by the treaty of alliance between Denmark and Russia of the 12th of August 1773, which was partly a mutually defensive league, and partly an engagement between the two states to upset the new constitution recently established in Sweden by Gustavus III., when the right moment for doing so should arrive. For this mischievous and immoral alliance, which bound Denmark to the wheels of the Russian empress’s chariot and sought to interfere in the internal affairs of a neighbouring state, Bernstorff was scarcely responsible, for the preliminaries had been definitely settled in his uncle’s time and he merely concluded them. But there can be no doubt that he regarded this anti-Swedish policy as the correct one for Denmark, especially with a monarch like Gustavus III. on the Swedish throne. It is also pretty certain that the anti-Swedish alliance was Russia’s price for compounding the Gottorp difficulty.

Starting from the hypothesis that Sweden was “Denmark-Norway’s most active and irreconcilable enemy,” Bernstorff logically included France, the secular ally of Sweden, among the hostile powers with whom an alliance was to be avoided, and drew near to Great Britain as the natural foe of France, especially during the American War of Independence, and this too despite the irritation occasioned in Denmark-Norway by Great Britain’s masterful interpretation of the expression “contraband.” Bernstorff’s sympathy with England grew stronger still when in 1779 Spain joined her enemies; and he was much inclined, the same winter, to join a triple alliance between Great Britain, Russia and Denmark-Norway, proposed by England for the purpose of compelling the Bourbon powers to accept reasonable terms of peace. But he was overruled by the crown prince Frederick, who thought such a policy too hazardous, when Russia declined to have anything to do with it. Instead of this the Russian chancellor Nikita Panin proposed an armed league to embrace all the neutral powers, for the purpose of protecting neutral shipping in time of war. This league was very similar to one proposed by Bernstorff himself in September 1778 for enforcing the principle “a free ship makes the cargo free”; but as now presented by Russia, he rightly regarded it as directed exclusively against England. He acceded to it indeed (9th of July 1780) because he could not help doing so; but he had previously, by a separate treaty with England, on the 4th of July, come to an understanding with that power as to the meaning of the expression “contraband of war.” This independence caused great wrath at St Petersburg, where Bernstorff was accused of disloyalty, and ultimately sacrificed to the resentment of the Russian government (13th of November 1780), the more readily as he already disagreed on many important points of domestic administration with the prime minister Höegh Guldberg. He retired to his Mecklenburg estates, but on the fall of Guldberg four years later, was recalled to office (April 1784). The ensuing thirteen years were perhaps the best days of the old Danish absolutism. The government, under the direction of such enlightened ministers as Bernstorff, Reventlow and others, held the mean between Struensee’s extravagant cosmopolitanism and Guldberg’s stiff conservatism. In such noble projects of reform as the emancipation of the serfs (see Reventlow) Bernstorff took a leading part, and so closely did he associate himself with everything Danish, so popular did he become in the Danish capital, that a Swedish diplomatist expressed the opinion that henceforth Bernstorff could not be removed without danger. Liberal-minded as he was, he held that “the will of the nation should be a law to the king,” and he boldly upheld the freedom of the press as the surest of safety-valves.

Meanwhile foreign complications were again endangering the position of Denmark-Norway. As Bernstorff had predicted, Panin’s neutrality project had resulted in a breach between Great Britain and Russia. Then came Gustavus III.’s sudden war with Russia in 1788. Bernstorff was bound by treaty to assist Russia in such a contingency, but he took care that the assistance so rendered should be as trifling as possible, to avoid offending Great Britain and Prussia. Still more menacing became the political situation on the outbreak of the French Revolution. Ill-disposed as Bernstorff was towards the Jacobins, he now condemned on principle any interference in the domestic affairs of France, and he was persuaded that Denmark’s safest policy was to keep clear of every anti-French coalition. From this unassailable standpoint he never swerved, despite the promises and even the menaces both of the eastern and the western powers. He was rewarded with complete success and the respect of all the diplomatists in Europe. His neutrality treaty with Sweden (17th of March 1794), for protecting their merchantmen by combined squadrons, was also extremely beneficial to the Scandinavian powers, both commercially and politically. Taught by the lesson of Poland, he had, in fact, long since abandoned his former policy of weakening Sweden. Bernstorff’s great faculties appeared, indeed, to mature and increase with age, and his death, on the 21st of June 1797, was regarded in Denmark as a national calamity.

Count Bernstorff was twice married, his wives being the two sisters of the writers Counts Christian and Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg. He left seven sons and three daughters. Of his sons the best known is Christian Günther, count von Bernstorff. Another, Count Joachim, was attached to his brother’s fortunes so long as he remained in the Danish service, was associated with him in representing Denmark at the congress of Vienna, and in 1815 was appointed ambassador at that court.

See Rasmus Nyerup, Bernstorffs Eftermaele (Kjobenhavn, 1799); Peter Edward Holm, Danmark-Norges udenrigske Historie (Copenhagen, 1875); Danmarks Riges Historie V. (Copenhagen, 1897-1905); Christian Ulrich Detlev von Eggers, Denkwurdigskeiten aus dem Leben des Grafen A.P. Bernstorff (Copenhagen, 1800); Aage Frus, A.P. Bernstorff og O. Hoegh-Guldberg (Copenhagen, 1899); and Bernstorfferne og Danmark (Copenhagen, 1903).

(R. N. B.)

BERNSTORFF, CHRISTIAN GÜNTHER, Count von (1769-1835), Danish and Prussian statesman and diplomatist, son of Count Andreas Peter von Bernstorff, was born at Copenhagen on the 3rd of April 1769. Educated for the diplomatic service under his father’s direction, he began his career in 1787, as attaché to the representative of Denmark at the opening of the Swedish diet. In 1789 he went as secretary of legation to Berlin, where his maternal uncle, Count Leopold Friedrich zu Stolberg, was Danish ambassador. His uncle’s influence, as well as his own social qualities, obtained him rapid promotion; he was soon chargé d’affaires, and in 1791 minister plenipotentiary. In 1794 he exchanged this post for the important one of ambassador at Stockholm, where he remained until May 1797, when he was summoned to Copenhagen to act as substitute for his father during his illness. On the death of the latter (21st June), he succeeded him as secretary of state for foreign affairs and privy councillor. In 1800 he became head of the ministry. He remained responsible for the foreign policy of Denmark until May 1810, a fateful period which saw the battle of Copenhagen (2nd of April 1801), the bombardment of Copenhagen and capture of the Danish fleet in 1807. After his retirement he remained without office until his appointment in 1811 as Danish ambassador at Vienna. He remained here, in spite of the fact that for a while Denmark was nominally at war with Austria, until, in January 1814, on the accession of Denmark to the coalition against Napoleon, he publicly resumed his functions as ambassador. He accompanied the emperor Francis to Paris, and was present at the signature of the first peace of Paris. With his brother Joachim, he represented Denmark at the congress of Vienna and, as a member for the commission for the regulation of the affairs of Germany, was responsible for some of that confusion of Danish and German interests which was to bear bitter fruit later in the Schleswig-Holstein question (q.v.). He again accompanied the allied sovereigns to Paris in 1815, returning to Copenhagen the same year. In 1817 he was appointed Danish ambassador at Berlin, his brother Joachim going at the same time to Vienna. In the following year Prince Hardenberg made him the formal proposition that he should transfer his services to Prussia, which, with the consent of his sovereign, he did.

It was, therefore, as a Prussian diplomat that Bernstorff attended the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 1818), at the close of which he returned to Berlin as minister of state and head of the department for foreign affairs. Bernstorff’s management of Prussian policy during the many years that he remained in office has been variously judged. He was by training and temperament opposed to the Revolution, and he was initiated into his new duties as a Prussian minister by the reactionary Ancillon. He is accused of having subordinated the particular interests of Prussia to the European policy of Metternich and the “Holy Alliance.” Whether any other policy would in the long run have served Prussia better is a matter for speculation. It is true that Bernstorff supported the Carlsbad decrees, and the Vienna Final Act; he was also the faithful henchman of Metternich at the congresses of Laibach, Troppau and Verona. On the other hand, he took a considerable share in laying the foundations of the customs union (Zollverein), which was destined to be the foundation of the Prussian hegemony in Germany. In his support of Russia’s action against Turkey in 1828 also he showed that he was no blind follower of Metternich’s views. In the crisis of 1830 his moderation in face of the warlike clamour of the military party at Berlin did much to prevent the troubles in Belgium and Poland from ending in a universal European conflagration.

From 1824 onward Bernstorff had been a constant sufferer from hereditary gout, intensified and complicated by the results of overwork. In the spring of 1832 the state of his health compelled him to resign the ministry of foreign affairs to Ancillon, who had already acted as his deputy for a year. He died on the 18th of March 1835.

See J. Caro in Allgem. Deutsch. Biog. s.v.; also H. von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte (Leipzig, 1874-1894).

(R. N. B.)

BERNSTORFF, JOHANN HARTWIG ERNST, Count von (1712-1772), Danish statesman, who came of a very ancient Mecklenburg family, was the son of Joachim Engelke, Freiherr von Bernstorff, chamberlain to the elector of Hanover, and was born on the 13th of May 1712. His maternal grandfather, Andreas Gottlieb Bernstorff (1640-1726), had been one of the ablest ministers of George I., and under his guidance Johann was very carefully educated, acquiring amongst other things that intimate knowledge of the leading European languages, especially French, which ever afterwards distinguished him. He was introduced into the Danish service by his relations, the brothers Plessen, who were ministers of state under Christian VI. In 1732 he was sent on a diplomatic mission to the court of Dresden; and from 1738 he represented Holstein at the diet of Regensburg, from 1744 to 1750 he represented Denmark at Paris, whence he returned in 1754 to Denmark as minister of foreign affairs. Supported by the powerful favourite A.G. Moltke, and highly respected by Frederick V., he occupied for twenty-one years the highest position in the government, and in the council of state his opinion was decisive. But his chief concern was with foreign affairs. Ever since the conclusion of the Great Northern War, Danish statesmen had been occupied in harvesting its fruits, namely, the Gottorp portions of Schleswig definitely annexed to Denmark in 1721 by the treaty of Nystad, and endeavouring to bring about a definitive general understanding with the house of Gottorp as to their remaining possessions in Holstein. With the head of the Swedish branch of the Gottorps, the crown prince Adolphus Frederick, things had been arranged by the exchange of 1750; but an attempt to make a similar arrangement with the chief of the elder Gottorp line, the cesarevitch Peter Feodorovich, had failed. In intimate connexion with the Gottorp affair stood the question of the political equilibrium of the north. Ever since Russia had become the dominant Baltic power, as well as the state to which the Gottorpers looked primarily for help, the necessity for a better understanding between the two Scandinavian kingdoms had clearly been recognized by the best statesmen of both, especially in Denmark from Christian VI.’s time; but unfortunately this sound and sensible policy was seriously impeded by the survival of the old national hatred on both sides of the Sound, still further complicated by Gottorp’s hatred of Denmark. Moreover, it was a diplomatic axiom in Denmark, founded on experience, that an absolute monarchy in Sweden was incomparably more dangerous to her neighbour than a limited monarchy, and after the collapse of Swedish absolutism with Charles XII., the upholding of the comparatively feeble, and ultimately anarchical, parliamentary government of Sweden became a question of principle with Danish statesmen throughout the 18th century. A friendly alliance with a relatively weak Sweden was the cardinal point of Bernstorff’s policy. But his plans were traversed again and again by unforeseen complications, the failure of the most promising presumptions, the perpetual shifting of apparently stable alliances; and again and again he had to modify his means to attain his ends. Amidst all these perplexities Bernstorff approved himself a consummate statesman. It seemed almost as if his wits were sharpened into a keener edge by his very difficulties; but since he condemned on principle every war which was not strictly defensive, and it had fallen to his lot to guide a comparatively small power, he always preferred the way of negotiation, even sometimes where the diplomatic tangle would perhaps best have been severed boldly by the sword. The first difficult problem he had to face was the Seven Years’ War. He was determined to preserve the neutrality of Denmark at any cost, and this he succeeded in doing, despite the existence of a subsidy-treaty with the king of Prussia, and the suspicions of England and Sweden. It was through his initiative, too, that the convention of Kloster-Seven was signed (10th of September 1757), and on the 4th of May 1758 he concluded a still more promising treaty with France, whereby, in consideration of Denmark’s holding an army-corps of 24,000 men in Holstein till the end of the war, to secure Hamburg, Lübeck and the Gottorp part of Holstein from invasion, France, and ultimately Austria also, engaged to bring about an exchange between the king of Denmark and the cesarevitch, as regards Holstein. But the course of the war made this compact inoperative. Austria hastened to repudiate her guarantee to Denmark in order not to offend the new emperor of Russia, Peter III., and one of Peter’s first acts on ascending the throne was to declare war against Denmark. The coolness and firmness of Bernstorff saved the situation. He protested that the king of Denmark was bound to defend Schleswig “so long as there was a sword in Denmark and a drop of blood in the veins of the Danish people.” He rejected the insulting ultimatum of the Russian emperor. He placed the best French general of the day at the head of the well-equipped Danish army. But just as the Russian and Danish armies had come within striking distance, the tidings reached Copenhagen that Peter III. had been overthrown by his consort. Bernstorff was one of the first to recognize the impotence of the French monarchy after the Seven Years’ War, and in 1763 he considered it expedient to exchange the French for the Russian alliance, which was cemented by the treaty of the 28th of April (March 11) 1765. This compact engaged Denmark to join with Russia in upholding the existing Swedish constitution, in return for which Catherine II. undertook to adjust the Gottorp difficulty by the cession of the Gottorp portion of Holstein in exchange for the counties of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst. For his part in this treaty Bernstorff was created count. On the accession of Christian VII., in 1766, Bernstorff’s position became very precarious, and he was exposed to all manner of attacks, being accused, without a shadow of truth, of exploiting Denmark, and of unduly promoting foreigners. It is remarkable, however, that though Bernstorff ruled Denmark for twenty years he never learnt Danish. His last political achievement was to draw still closer to Russia by the treaty of the 13th of December 1769, the most important paragraph of which stipulated that any change in the Swedish constitution should be regarded by Denmark and Russia as a casus belli against Sweden, and that in the event of such a war Denmark should retain all the territory conquered from Sweden. This treaty proved to be a great mistake on Denmark’s part, but circumstances seemed at the time to warrant it. Nine months later, on the 13th of September 1770, Bernstorff was dismissed as the result of Struensee’s intrigues, and, rejecting the brilliant offers of Catherine II. if he would enter the Russian service, retired to his German estates, where he died on the 18th of February 1772. Bernstorff was not only one of the ablest but one of the noblest and most conscientious statesmen of his day. The motto he chose on receiving the order of the Daneborg was “Integritas et rectum custodiunt me,” and throughout a long life he was never false to it.

See Poul Vedel, Den aeldre Grev Bernstorffs ministerium (Copenhagen, 1882); Correspondance ministérielle du Comte J.H.E. Bernstorff, ed. Vedel (Copenhagen, 1882); Aage Friis, Bernslorfferne og Danmark (Copenhagen, 1899).

(R. N. B.)

BEROSSUS, a priest of Bel at Babylon, who translated into Greek the standard Babylonian work on astrology and astronomy, and compiled (in three books) the history of his country from native documents, which he published in Greek in the reign of Antiochus II. (250 B.C.). His works have perished, but extracts from the history have been preserved by Josephus and Eusebius, the latter of whom probably derived them not directly from Berossus, but through the medium of Alexander Polyhistor and Apollodorus. The extracts containing the Babylonian cosmology, the list of the antediluvian kings of Babylonia, and the Chaldaean story of the Deluge, have been shown by the decipherment of the cuneiform texts to have faithfully reproduced the native legends; we may, therefore, conclude that the rest of the History was equally trustworthy. On the other hand, a list of post-diluvian dynasties, which is quoted by Eusebius and Georgius Syncellus as having been given by Berossus, cannot, in its present form, be reconciled with the monumental facts, though a substratum of historical truth is discoverable in it. As it stands, it is as follows:—

1. 86 Chaldaean kings 34,080 or 33,091 years

2. 8 Median ” 224 ”

3. 11 other kings ” no number.

4. 49 Chaldaean ” 458 ”

5. 9 Arabian ” 245 ”

6. 45 Assyrian ” 526 ”

After these, according to Eusebius, came the reign of Pul. By means of an ingenious chronological combination, the several items of which, however, are very questionable, J.A. Brandis assigned 258 years to the 3rd dynasty; other summations have been proposed with equally little assurance of certainty. If Eusebius can be trusted, the 6th dynasty ended in 729 B.C., the year in which Pul or Tiglath-pileser III. was crowned king of Babylonia. But all attempts to harmonize the scheme of dynasties thus ascribed to Berossus with the list given us in the so-called dynastic Tablets discovered by Dr Pinches have been failures. The numbers, whether of kings or of years, cannot have been handed down to us correctly by the Greek writers. All that seems certain is that Berossus arranged his history so that it should fill the astronomical period of 36,000 years, beginning with the first man and ending with the conquest of Babylon by Alexander the Great.

See J.P. Cory, Ancient Fragments (1826, ed. by E.R. Hodges, 1876); Fr. Lenormant, Essai de commentaire des fragments cosmogoniques de Bérose (1872); A. von Gutschmid in the Rheinisches Museum (1853); George Smith in T.S.B.A. iii., 1874, pp. 361-379; Th.G. Pinches in P.S.B.A., 1880-1881.

(A. H. S.)

BERRY, CHARLES ALBERT (1852-1899), English non-conformist divine, was born on the 14th of December 1852 at Bradshawgate, Leigh, Lancashire. At the age of seventeen he entered Airedale College, Bradford, to train for the Congregational ministry, and in 1875 became pastor of St George’s Road Congregational church, Bolton. He became widely known as a man of administrative ability, a vigorous platform speaker and an eloquent preacher. In July 1883 he undertook the pastorate of the church at Queen Street, Wolverhampton, with the supervision of nine dependent churches in the neighbourhood. Here again he exercised a wide influence, due in part to his evangelical conviction, eloquence, broad views and powers of organization, but also to the magnetic force of his personality. In 1887 he went to America in fulfilment of a promise to Henry Ward Beecher of Brooklyn, and received a unanimous invitation to succeed Beecher in what was then the best-known pulpit in the United States. Berry, however, felt that his work lay in England and declined the invitation. In 1892 he took part in a conference at Grindelwald on the question of Christian Reunion, and subsequently, with Hugh Price Hughes and Alexander Mackennal of Bowdon, conducted a campaign throughout England, introducing the ideas and principles of Free Church federation. He was the first president of the Free Church congress. He played an effective part in expressing the popular desire for peace between England and America in reply to President Cleveland’s message on the Venezuelan boundary dispute, and was invited to Washington to preach in connexion with the endeavour to establish an international arbitration treaty. In 1896 he was elected chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. In 1898 his health began to fail, and he died suddenly on the 31st of January 1899. His published works consist chiefly of addresses, and two volumes of sermons, Vision and Duty, and Mischievous Goodness.

(D. Mn.)

BERRY, CHARLES FERDINAND, Duke of (1778-1820), younger son of Charles X. of France, was born at Versailles. At the Revolution he left France with his father, then comte d’Artois, and served in the army of Condé; from 1792 to 1797. He afterwards joined the Russian army, and in 1801 took up his residence in England, where he remained for thirteen years. During that time he married an Englishwoman, Anna Brown, by whom he had two daughters, afterwards the baronne de Charette and the comtesse de Lucinge-Faucigny. The marriage was cancelled for political reasons in 1814, when the duke set out for France. His frank, open manners gained him some favour with his countrymen, and Louis XVIII. named him commander-in-chief of the army at Paris on the return of Napoleon from Elba. He was, however, unable to retain the loyalty of his troops, and retired to Ghent during the Hundred Days. In 1816 he married the princess Caroline Ferdinande Louise (1798-1870), eldest daughter of King Francis I. of Naples. On the 13th of February 1820 he was mortally wounded, when leaving the opera-house at Paris with his wife, by a saddler named Louis Pierre Louvel. Seven months after his death the duchess gave birth to a son, who received the title of duke of Bordeaux, but who is known in history as the comte de Chambord. A daughter, afterwards duchess of Parma, was born in 1819.

The duchess of Berry was compelled to follow Charles X. to Holyrood after July 1830, but it was with the resolution of returning speedily and making an attempt to secure the throne for her son. From England she went to Italy, and in April 1832 she landed near Marseilles, but, receiving no support, was compelled to make her way towards the loyal districts of Vendée and Brittany. Her followers, however, were defeated, and, after remaining concealed for five months in a house in Nantes, she was betrayed to the government and imprisoned in the castle of Blaye. Here she gave birth to a daughter, the fruit of a secret marriage contracted with an Italian nobleman, Count Ettore Lucchesi-Palli (1805-1864). The announcement of this marriage at once deprived the duchess of the sympathies of her supporters. She was no longer an object of fear to the French government, who released her in June 1833. She set sail for Sicily, and, joining her husband, lived in retirement from that time till her death, at Brunnensee in Switzerland, in April 1870.

BERRY, JOHN, Duke of (1340-1416), third son of John II., king of France and Bonne of Luxemburg, was born on the 30th of November 1340 at Vincennes. He was created count of Poitiers in 1356, and was made the king’s lieutenant in southern France, though the real power rested chiefly with John of Armagnac, whose daughter Jeanne he married in 1360. The loss of his southern possessions by the treaty of Bretigny was compensated by the fiefs of Auvergne and Berry, with the rank of peer of France. The duke went to England in 1360 as a hostage for the fulfilment of the treaty of Bretigny, returning to France in 1367 on the pretext of collecting his ransom. He took no leading part in the war against the English, his energies being largely occupied with the satisfaction of his artistic and luxurious tastes. For this reason perhaps his brother Charles V. assigned him no share in the government during the minority of Charles VI. He received, however, the province of Languedoc. The peasant revolt of the Tuchins and Coquins, as the insurgents were called, was suppressed with great harshness, and the duke exacted from the states of Languedoc assembled at Lyons a fine of £15,000. He fought at Rosebeke in 1382 against the Flemings and helped to suppress the Parisian revolts. By a series of delays he caused the failure of the naval expedition prepared at Sluys against England in 1386, and a second accusation of military negligence led to disgrace of the royal princes and the temporary triumph of the marmousels, as the advisers of the late king were nicknamed. Charles VI. visited Languedoc in 1389-1390, and enquired into his uncle’s government. The duke was deprived of the government of Languedoc, and his agent, Bétizac, was burnt. When in 1401 he was restored, he delegated his authority in the province, where he was still hated, to Bérnard d’Armagnac. In 1396 he negotiated a truce with Richard II. of England, and his marriage with the princess Isabella of France. He tried to mediate between his brother Philip the Bold of Burgundy and his nephew Louis, duke of Orleans, and later between John “sans Peur” of Burgundy and Orleans. He broke with John after the murder of Orleans, though he tried to prevent civil war, and only finally joined the Armagnac party in 1410. In 1413 he resumed his rôle of mediator, and was for a short time tutor to the dauphin. He died in Paris on the 15th of June 1416, leaving vast treasures of jewelry, objects of art, and especially of illuminated MSS., many of which have been preserved. He decorated the Sainte Chapelle at Bourges; he built the Hôtel de Nesle in Paris, and palaces at Poitiers, Bourges, Mehun-sur-Yèvre and elsewhere.

See also L. Raynal, Histoire du Berry (Bourges, 1845); “Jean, duc de Berry,” in S Luce, La France pendant la guerre de Cent Ans (1890), vol. i.; Toulgoet-Tréanna, in Mém. de la Soc. des antiquaires du centre, vol. xvii. (1890). His beautiful illuminated Livre d’heures was reproduced (Paris, fol. 1904) by P. Durrieu.

BERRY, or Berri, a former province of France, absorbed in 1790 in the departments of Cher, corresponding roughly with Haut-Berry, and Indre, representing Bas-Berry. George Sand, the most famous of “berrichon” writers, has described the quiet scenery and rural life of the province in the rustic novels of her later life. Berry is the civitas or pagus Bituricensis of Gregory of Tours. The Bituriges were said by Livy (v. 34) to have been the dominating tribe in Gaul in the 7th century, one of their kings, Ambigat, having ruled over all Gaul. In Caesar’s time they were dependent on the Aedui. The tribes inhabiting the districts of Berry and Bourbonnais were distinguished as Bituriges Cubi. The numerous menhirs and dolmens to be found in the district, to which local superstitions still cling, are probably monuments of still earlier inhabitants. In 52 B.C. the Bituriges, at the order of Vercingetorix, set fire to their towns, but spared Bourges (Avaricum) their capital, which was taken and sacked by the Romans. The province was amalgamated under Augustus with Aquitaine, and Bourges became the capital of Aquitania Prima. In 475 Berry came into the possession of the west Goths, from whom it was taken (c. 507) by Clovis. The first count of Berry, Chunibert (d. 763), was created by Waifer, duke of Aquitaine, from whom the county was wrested by Pippin the Short, who made it his residence and left it to his son Carloman, on whose death it fell to his brother Charlemagne. The countship of Berry was suppressed (926) by Rudolph, king of the Franks (fl. 923-936). Berry was for some time a group of lordships dependent directly on the crown, but the chief authority eventually passed to the viscounts of Bourges, who, while owning the royal suzerainty, preserved a certain independence until 1101, when the viscount Odo Arpin de Dun sold his fief to the crown. Berry was part of the dowry of Eleanor, wife of Louis VII., and on her divorce and remarriage with Henry II. of England it passed to the English king. Its possession remained, however, a matter of dispute until 1200, when Berry reverted by treaty with John of England to Philip Augustus, and the various fiefs of Berry were given as a dowry to John’s niece, Blanche of Castile, on her marriage with Philip’s son Louis (afterwards Louis VIII.). Philip Augustus established an effective control over the administration of the province by the appointment of a royal bailli. Berry suffered during the Hundred Years’ War, and more severely during the wars of religion in the 16th century. It had been made a duchy in 1360, and its first duke, John [Jean] (1340-1416), son of the French king John II., encouraged the arts and beautified the province with money wrung from his government of Languedoc. Thenceforward it was held as an apanage of the French crown, usually by a member of the royal family closely related to the king. Charles of France (1447-1472), brother of Louis XI, was duke of Berry, but was deprived of this province, as subsequently of the duchies of Normandy and Guienne, for intrigues against his brother. The duchy was also governed by Jeanne de Valois (d. 1505), the repudiated wife of Louis XII.1; by Marguerite d’Angoulême, afterwards queen of Navarre; by Marguerite de Valois, afterwards duchess of Savoy; and by Louise of Lorraine, widow of Henry III., after whose death (1601) the province was finally reabsorbed in the royal domain. The title of duke of Berry, divested of territorial significance, was held by princes of the royal house. Charles (1686-1714), duke of Berry, grandson of Louis XIV., and third son of the dauphin Louis (d. 1711), married Marie Louise Elisabeth (1686-1714), eldest daughter of the duke of Orleans, whose intrigues made her notorious. The last to bear the title of duke of Berry was the ill-fated Charles Ferdinand, grandson and heir of Charles X.

1 See R. le Maulde, Jeanne de France, duchesse d’Orléans et de Berry (Paris, 1883).

BERRYER, ANTOINE PIERRE (1790-1868), French advocate and parliamentary orator, was the son of an eminent advocate and counsellor to the parlement. He was educated at the Collège de Juilly, on leaving which he adopted the profession of the law; he was admitted advocate in 1811, and in the same year he married. In the great conflict of the period between Napoleon I. and the Bourbons, Berryer, like his father, was an ardent Legitimist; and in the spring of 1815, at the opening of the campaign of the Hundred Days, he followed Louis XVIII. to Ghent as a volunteer. After the second restoration he distinguished himself as a courageous advocate of moderation in the treatment of the military adherents of the emperor. He assisted his father and Dupin in the unsuccessful defence of Marshal Ney before the chamber of peers; and he undertook alone the defence of General Cambronne and General Debelle, procuring the acquittal of the former and the pardon of the latter. By this time he had a very large business as advocate, and was engaged on behalf of journalists in many press prosecutions. He stood forward with a noble resolution to maintain the freedom of the press, and severely censured the rigorous measures of the police department. In 1830, not long before the fall of Charles X., Berryer was elected a member of the chamber of deputies. He appeared there as the champion of the king and encouraged him in his reactionary policy. After the revolution of July, when the Legitimists withdrew in a body, Berryer alone retained his seat as deputy. He resisted, but unsuccessfully, the abolition of the hereditary peerage. He advocated trial by jury in press prosecutions, the extension of municipal franchises and other liberal measures. In May 1832 he hastened from Paris to see the duchess of Berry on her landing in the south of France for the purpose of organizing an insurrection in favour of her son, the duke of Bordeaux, since known as the Comte de Chambord. Berryer attempted to turn her from her purpose; and failing in this he set out for Switzerland. He was, however, arrested, imprisoned and brought to trial as one of the insurgents. He was immediately acquitted. In the following year he pleaded for the liberation of the duchess, made a memorable speech in defence of Chateaubriand, who was prosecuted for his violent attacks on the government of Louis Philippe, and undertook the defence of several Legitimist journalists. Among the more noteworthy events of his subsequent career were his defence of Louis Napoleon after the ridiculous affair of Boulogne, in 1840, and a visit to England in December 1843, for the purpose of formally acknowledging the pretender, the duke of Bordeaux, then living in London, as Henry V. and lawful king of France. Berryer was an active member of the National Assembly convoked after the revolution of February 1848, again visited the pretender, then at Wiesbaden, and still fought in the old cause. This long parliamentary career was closed by a courageous protest against the coup d’état of December 2, 1851. After a lapse of twelve years, however, he appeared once more in his forsaken field as a deputy to the Corps Législatif. Berryer was elected member of the French Academy in 1854. A visit paid by this famous orator to Lord Brougham in 1865 was made the occasion of a banquet given in his honour by the benchers of the Temple and of Lincoln’s Inn. In November 1868 he was removed by his own desire from Paris to his country seat at Augerville, and there he died on the 29th of the same month.

BERSERKER (from the “sark” or shirt of the “bear,” or other animal-skins worn by them), in Scandinavian mythology, the name of the twelve sons of the hero Berserk, grandson of the eight-handed Starkadder and Alfhilde. Berserk was famed for the reckless fury with which he fought, always going into battle without armour. By the daughter of King Swafurlam, whom he had killed, he had the twelve sons who were his equals in bravery. In Old Norse the term berserker thus became synonymous with reckless courage, and was later applied to the bodyguards of several of the Scandinavian heroes.

BERT, PAUL (1833-1886), French physiologist and politician, was born at Auxerre (Yonne) on the 17th of October 1833. He entered the École Polytechnique at Paris with the intention of becoming an engineer; then changing his mind, he studied law; and finally, under the influence of the zoologist, L.P. Gratiolet (1815-1865), he took up physiology, becoming one of Claude Bernard’s most brilliant pupils. After graduating at Paris as doctor of medicine in 1863, and doctor of science in 1866, he was appointed professor of physiology successively at Bordeaux (1866) and the Sorbonne (1869). After the revolution of 1870 he began to take part in politics as a supporter of Gambetta. In 1874 he was elected to the Assembly, where he sat on the extreme left, and in 1876 to the chamber of deputies. He was one of the most determined enemies of clericalism, and an ardent advocate of “liberating national education from religious sects, while rendering it accessible to every citizen.” In 1881 he was minister of education and worship in Gambetta’s short-lived cabinet, and in the same year he created a great sensation by a lecture on modern Catholicism, delivered in a Paris theatre, in which he poured ridicule on the fables and follies of the chief religious tracts and handbooks that circulated especially in the south of France. Early in 1886 he was appointed resident-general in Annam and Tonkin, and died of dysentery at Hanoi on the 11th of November of that year. But he was more distinguished as a man of science than as a politician or administrator. His classical work, La Pression barométrique (1878), embodies researches that gained him the biennial prize of 20,000 francs from the Academy of Sciences in 1875, and is a comprehensive investigation on the physiological effects of air-pressure, both above and below the normal. His earliest researches, which provided him with material for his two doctoral theses, were devoted to animal grafting and the vitality of animal tissues, and they were followed by studies on the physiological action of various poisons, on anaesthetics, on respiration and asphyxia, on the causes of the change of colour in the chameleon, &c. He was also interested in vegetable physiology, and in particular investigated the movements of the sensitive plant, and the influence of light of different colours on the life of vegetation. After about 1880 he produced several elementary text-books of scientific instruction, and also various publications on educational and allied subjects.

BERTANI, AGOSTINO (1812-1886), Italian revolutionist, was born at Milan on the 19th of October 1812. He took part in the insurrection of 1848, though opposed to the fusion of Lombardy with Piedmont. During the Roman republic of 1849, he, as medical officer, organized the ambulance service, and, after the fall of Rome, withdrew to Genoa, where he worked with Sir James Hudson for the liberation of the political prisoners of Naples, but held aloof from the Mazzinian conspiracies. In 1859 he founded a revolutionary journal at Genoa, but, shortly afterwards, joined as surgeon the Garibaldian corps in the war of 1859. After Villafranca he became the organizer-in-chief of the expeditions to Sicily, remaining at Genoa after Garibaldi’s departure for Marsala, and organizing four separate volunteer corps, two of which were intended for Sicily and two for the papal states. Cavour, however, obliged all to sail for Sicily. Upon the arrival of Garibaldi at Naples, Bertani was appointed secretary-general of the dictator, in which capacity he reorganized the police, abolished the secret service fund, founded twelve infant asylums, suppressed the duties upon Sicilian products, prepared for the suppression of the religious orders, and planned the sanitary reconstruction of the city. Entering parliament in 1861, he opposed the Garibaldian expedition, which ended at Aspromonte, but nevertheless tended Garibaldi’s wound with affectionate devotion. In 1866 he organized the medical service for the 40,000 Garibaldians, and in 1867 fought at Mentana. His parliamentary career, though marked by zeal, was less brilliant than his revolutionary activity. Up to 1870 he remained an agitator, but, after the liberation of Rome, seceded from the historic left, and became leader of the extreme left, a position held until his death on the 30th of April 1886. His chief work as deputy was an inquiry into the sanitary conditions of the peasantry, and the preparation of the sanitary code adopted by the Crispi administration.

(H. W. S.)

BERTAT (Arab. Jebalain), negroes of the Shangalla group of tribes, mainly agriculturists. They occupy the valleys of the Yabus and Tumat, tributaries of the Blue Nile. They are shortish and very black, with projecting jaws, broad noses and thick lips. By both sexes the hair is worn short or the head shaved; on cheeks and temple are tribal marks in the form of scars. The huts of the Bertat are circular, the floor raised on short poles. Their weapons are the spear, throwing-club, sword and dagger, and also the kulbeda or throwing-knife. Blocks of salt are the favourite form of currency. Gold washing is practised. Nature worship still struggles against the spread of Mahommedanism. The Bertat, estimated to number some 80,000, c. 1880, were nearly exterminated during the period of Dervish ascendancy (1884-1898) in the eastern Sudan. Settled among them are Arab communities governed by their own sheiks, while the meks or rulers of the Bertat speak Arabic, and show traces of foreign blood. (See Fazogli.)

See Koeltlitz, “The Bertat,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxiii. 51; Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (London, 1905).

BERTAUT, JEAN (1552-1611), French poet, was born at Caen in 1552. He figures with Desportes in the disdainful couplet of Boileau on Ronsard:—

“Ce poète orgueilleux, trébuché de si haut, Rendit plus retenus Desportes et Bertaut.”

He wrote light verse to celebrate the incidents of court life in the manner of Desportes, but his verse is more fantastic and fuller of conceits than his master’s. He early entered the church, and had a share in the conversion of Henry IV., a circumstance which assured his career. He was successively councillor of the parlement of Grenoble, secretary to the king, almoner to Marie de’ Medici, abbot of Aulnay and finally, in 1606, bishop of Sées. After his elevation to the bishopric he ceased to produce the light verse in which he excelled, though his scruples did not prevent him from preparing a new edition of his Recueil de quelques vers amoureux (1602) in 1606. The serious poems in which he celebrated the public events of his later years are dull and lifeless. Bertaut died at Sées on the 8th of June 1611. His works were edited by M.Ad. Chenevières in 1891.

BERTH, originally a nautical term, probably connected with the verb “to bear,” first found in literature at the end of the 16th century, with the alternative spelling “birth.” Its primary meaning is “sea-room,” whether on the high seas or at anchor. Hence the phrase “to give a wide berth to,” meaning “to keep at a safe distance from,” both in its literal and its metaphorical use. From meaning sea-room for a ship at anchor, “berth” comes to mean also the position of a ship at her moorings (“to berth a ship”). The word further means any place on a ship allotted for a special purpose, where the men mess or sleep, or an office or appointment on board, whence the word has passed into colloquial use with the meaning of a situation or employment. From the Icelandic byrdi, a board, is also derived the ship-building term “berth,” meaning to board, put up bulk-heads, etc.

BERTHELOT, MARCELLIN PIERRE EUGÈNE (1827-1907), French chemist and politician, was born at Paris on the 29th of October 1827, being the son of a doctor. After distinguishing himself at school in history and philosophy, he turned to the study of science. In 1851 he became a member of the staff of the Collège de France as assistant to A.J. Balard, his former master, and about the same time he began his life-long friendship with Ernest Renan. In 1854 he made his reputation by his doctoral thesis, Sur les combinaisons de la glycérine avec les acides, which described a series of beautiful researches in continuation and amplification of M.E. Chevreul’s classical work. In 1859 he was appointed professor of organic chemistry at the École Supérieure de Pharmacie, and in 1865 he accepted the new chair of organic chemistry, which was specially created for his benefit at the Collège de France. He became a member of the Academy of Medicine in 1863, and ten years afterwards entered the Academy of Sciences, of which he became perpetual secretary in 1889 in succession to Louis Pasteur. He was appointed inspector general of higher education in 1876, and after his election as life senator in 1881 he continued to take an active interest in educational questions, especially as affected by compulsory military service. In the Goblet ministry of 1886-1887 he was minister of public instruction, and in the Bourgeois cabinet of 1895-1896 he held the portfolio for foreign affairs. His scientific jubilee was celebrated in Paris in 1901. He died suddenly, immediately after the death of his wife, on the 18th of March 1907, at Paris, and with her was buried in the Panthéon.

The fundamental conception that underlay all Berthelot’s chemical work was that all chemical phenomena depend on the action of physical forces which can be determined and measured. When he began his active career it was generally believed that, although some instances of the synthetical production of organic substances had been observed, on the whole organic chemistry must remain an analytical science and could not become a constructive one, because the formation of the substances with which it deals required the intervention of vital activity in some shape. To this attitude he offered uncompromising opposition, and by the synthetical production of numerous hydrocarbons, natural fats, sugars and other bodies he proved that organic compounds can be formed by ordinary methods of chemical manipulation and obey the same laws as inorganic substances, thus exhibiting the “creative character in virtue of which chemistry actually realizes the abstract conceptions of its theories and classifications—a prerogative so far possessed neither by the natural nor by the historical sciences.” His investigations on the synthesis of organic compounds were published in numerous papers and books, including Chimie organique fondée sur la synthèse (1860) and Les Carbures d’hydrogéne (1901). Again he held that chemical phenomena are not governed by any peculiar laws special to themselves, but are explicable in terms of the general laws of mechanics that are in operation throughout the universe; and this view he developed, with the aid of thousands of experiments, in his Mécanique chimique (1878) and his Thermochimie (1897). This branch of study naturally conducted him to the investigation of explosives, and on the theoretical side led to the results published in his work Sur la force de la poudre et des matières explosives (1872), while on the practical side it enabled him to render important services to his country as president of the scientific defence committee during the siege of Paris in 1870-71 and subsequently as chief of the French explosives committee. In the later years of his life he turned to the study of the earlier phases of the science which he did so much to advance, and students of chemical history are greatly indebted to him for his book on Les Origines de l’alchimie (1885) and his Introduction à l’étude de la chimie des anciens et du moyen âge (1889), as well as for publishing translations of various old Greek, Syriac and Arabic treatises on alchemy and chemistry (Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, 1887-1888, and La Chimie au moyen âge, 1893). He was also the author of Science et philosophie (1886), which contains a well-known letter to Renan on “La Science idéale et la science positive,” of La Révolution chimique, Lavoisier (1890), of Science et morale (1897), and of numerous articles in La Grande Encyclopédie, which he helped to establish.

BERTHIER, LOUIS ALEXANDRE, prince of Neuchâtel (1753-1815), marshal of France and chief of the staff under Napoleon I., was born at Versailles on the 20th of February 1753. As a boy he was instructed in the military art by his father, an officer of the Corps de génie, and at the age of seventeen he entered the army, serving successively in the staff, the engineers and the prince de Lambesq’s dragoons. In 1780 he went to North America with Rochambeau, and on his return, having attained the rank of colonel, he was employed in various staff posts and in a military mission to Prussia. During the Revolution, as chief of staff of the Versailles national guard, he protected the aunts of Louis XVI. from popular violence, and aided their escape (1791). In the war of 1792 he was at once made chief of staff to Marshal Lückner, and he bore a distinguished part in the Argonne campaign of Dumouriez and Kellermann. He served with great credit in the Vendéan War of 1793-95, and was in the next year made a general of division and chief of staff (Major-Général) to the army of Italy, which Bonaparte had recently been appointed to command. His power of work, accuracy and quick comprehension, combined with his long and varied experience and his complete mastery of detail, made him the ideal chief of staff to a great soldier; and in this capacity he was Napoleon’s most valued assistant for the rest of his career. He accompanied Napoleon throughout the brilliant campaign of 1796, and was left in charge of the army after the peace of Campo Formio. In this post he organized the Roman republic (1798), after which he joined his chief in Egypt, serving there until Napoleon’s return. He assisted in the coup d’état of 18th Brumaire, afterwards becoming minister of war for a time. In the campaign of Marengo he was the nominal head of the Army of Reserve, but the first consul accompanied the army and Berthier acted in reality, as always, as chief of staff to Napoleon. At the close of the campaign he was employed in civil and diplomatic business. When Napoleon became emperor, Berthier was at once made a marshal of the empire. He took part in the campaigns of Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland, and was created duke of Valengin in 1806, sovereign prince of Neuchâtel in the same year and vice-constable of the empire in 1807. In 1808 he served in the Peninsula, and in 1809 in the Austrian War, after which he was given the title of prince of Wagram. Berthier married a niece of the king of Bavaria. He was with Napoleon in Russia in 1812, Germany in 1813, and France in 1814, fulfilling, till the fall of the empire, the functions of “major-general” of the Grande Armée. He abandoned Napoleon to make his peace with Louis XVIII. in 1814, and accompanied the king in his solemn entry into Paris. During Napoleon’s captivity in Elba, Berthier, whom he informed of his projects, was much perplexed as to his future course, and, being unwilling to commit himself, fell under the suspicion both of his old leader and of Louis XVIII. On Napoleon’s return he withdrew to Bamberg, where he died on the 1st of June 1815. The manner of his death is uncertain; according to some accounts he was assassinated by members of a secret society, others say that, maddened by the sight of Russian troops marching to invade France, he threw himself from his window and was killed. Berthier was not a great commander. When he was in temporary command in 1809 the French army in Bavaria underwent a series of reverses. Whatever merit as a general he may have possessed was completely overshadowed by the genius of his master. But his title to fame is that he understood and carried out that master’s directions to the minutest detail.

BERTHOLLET, CLAUDE LOUIS (1748-1822), French chemist, was born at Talloire, near Annecy in Savoy, on the 9th of December 1748. He studied first at Chambery and afterwards at Turin, where he graduated in medicine. Settling in Paris in 1772, he became the private physician of Philip, duke of Orleans, and by his chemical work soon gained so high a reputation that in 1780 he was admitted into the Academy of Sciences. In 1785 he declared himself an adherent of the Lavoisierian school, though he did not accept Lavoisier’s view of oxygen as the only and universal acidifying principle, and he took part in the reform in chemical nomenclature carried out by Lavoisier and his associates in 1787. Among the substances of which he investigated the composition were ammonia, sulphuretted hydrogen and prussic acid, and his experiments on chlorine, which he regarded, not as an element, but as oxygenated muriatic (oxymuriatic) acid, led him to propose it as a bleaching agent in 1785. He also prepared potassium chlorate and attempted to use it in the manufacture of gunpowder as a substitute for saltpetre. When, at the beginning of the French Revolution, the deficiency in the supply of saltpetre became a serious matter, he was placed at the head of the commission entrusted with the development of its production in French territory, and another commission on which he served had for its object the improvement of the methods of iron manufacture. He was also a member in 1794 of the committee on agriculture and the arts, and technical science was further indebted to him for a systematic exposition of the principles of dyeing—Élémens de l’art de la teinture, 1791, of which he published a second edition in 1809, in association with his son, A.B. Berthollet (1783-1811). After 1794 he was teacher of chemistry in the polytechnic and normal schools of Paris, and in 1795 he took an active part in remodelling the Academy as the Institut National. In the following year he and Gaspard Monge were chosen chiefs of a commission charged with the task of selecting in Italy the choicest specimens of ancient and modern art for the national galleries of Paris; and in 1798 he was one of the band of scientific men who accompanied Napoleon to Egypt, there forming themselves into the Institute of Egypt on the plan of the Institut National. On the fall of the Directory he was made a senator and grand officer of the Legion of Honour; under the empire he became a count; and after the restoration of the Bourbons he took his seat as a peer. In the later years of his life he had at Arcueil, where he died on the 6th of November 1822, a well-equipped laboratory, which became a centre frequented by some of the most distinguished scientific men of the time, their proceedings being published in three volumes, between 1807 and 1817, as the Mémoires de la société d’Arcueil. Berthollet’s most remarkable contribution to chemistry was his Essai de statique chimique (1803), the first systematic attempt to grapple with the problems of chemical physics. His doctrines did not meet with general approval among his contemporaries, partly perhaps because he pushed them too far, as for instance in holding that two elements might combine in constantly varying proportions, a view which gave rise to a long dispute with L.J. Proust; but his speculations, in particular his insistence on the influence of the relative masses of the acting substances in chemical reactions, have exercised a dominating influence on the modern developments of the theory of chemical affinity, of which, far more than T.O. Bergman, whom he controverted, he must be regarded as the founder.